Daniel Greene

Tag: phonology

  • Speak & Spell II a Successful Workshop

    My first Speak & Spell workshop went so well that people demanded more, so I put together a Speak & Spell II workshop. I improved upon the first workshop by organizing all the phonological and orthographical features by feature rather than by language. I also tweaked a few other things based on participant feedback.

    Eleven people attended the second of my phonology / orthography workshops, Speak & Spell II. It went very well. I got the workshop evaluation feedback today, and the average of all scores was 5.0, the highest rating possible.

    My next workshop, "Just What They Said: Retaining Ambiguity when Interpreting Vague Language" is next Saturday, September 26th, from 1-6:30 PM in the same location, the Desert Valleys Regional Cooperative. Thanks to Joy Marks who continues to support my workshops and allows me to use this excellent facility. This coming workshop is sponsored by the Arizona Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. Anyone interested may register and pay for the workshop on Arizona RID’s Professional Development page.

  • My First Speak & Spell Workshop




    My Speak & Spell Workshop

    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene

    Thanks to Joy Marks at the Desert Valleys Regional Cooperative for taking this photo and for providing the logistical support and classroom, and thanks to Joy and ACDHH for providing the promotional materials and CEU sponsorship. Thanks also to the 15 people who attended. We all had a good time and I do believed we all learned a lot- including me as I did my research in developing the workshop!

    My workshop title was Speak & Spell: How to Pronounce & Spell Foreign Names & Words, and it involved a comparative survey of the phonologies (sound systems) and orthologies (spelling conventions) of a variety of the world’s languages. I mixed lecture with interactive exercises that encouraged participants to spell, pronounce, talk about and explore international names and words. Our focus in this workshop was the mastery of foreign spelling and pronunciation in our ASL-to-English and English-to-ASL interpreting.

    I’m happy to say my workshop was a success! I’m now going to spend the next two months developing my next workshop, “Just What They Said: Retaining Ambiguity When Interpreting Vague Language” on Saturday, September 19 from noon to 5:30 PM (location TBA).

  • Upcoming Workshop: Speak-N-Spell: How to Spell & Pronounce Foreign Names & Words

    I’m teaching my next workshop at the Desert Valleys Regional Cooperative on Wednesday, July 15, from 5:30-8:30 PM. I designed this workshop to help ASL interpreters to recognize foreign names and words when they hear them so that they know how to fingerspell them, and to recognize foreign names and words when they see them fingerspelled so they know how to pronounce them. The workshop examines the phonologies of various languages and gives participants tools for further study so they can increase their knowledge of foreign spelling systems. For more info, download this flier / application form.

  • Befriending Phonemes

    In my first column, back in June 1998, I wrote about how we as sign language interpreters for the Deaf are also “spoken language interpreters for the Hearing.” I emphasized the importance of brushing up on our English so that we could do justice to our clients—both Deaf and Hearing—when we voice-interpret. But is English really all we speak when we voice-interpret? Consider the following scenario:

    You are interpreting for a Deaf man who is teaching a Deaf Culture class about the origins of ASL and how it differs from signed languages of foreign countries. How many foreign words and names, from how many different countries, are you going to need to pronounce? How many different speech-sound systems, or phonologies, do you need to have at least a passing familiarity with in order to successfully complete this assignment? How many phonemes will you be able to “pull out of your hat”? (Phonemes are the smallest units of meaningful sound in a language, for example, the sounds “f” and “th” [IPA Θ] which make the difference between “deaf” and “death”—a distinction I’m sure many of us wish more people understood!)

    In the above scenario, I guarantee you’ll be pronouncing such venerated French names as Abbé de l’Epée, Jean Massieu, and Laurent Clerc, and such mouthfuls as La Langue des Signes Quebecquoise. You may even have to pronounce words like chercher which sound nothing like they are spelled (the French verb to search, chercher, is pronounced SHARE-SHAY, with the phoneme “r” pronounced as though you were gargling). Then, of course, there are the Spanish names like Ponce de Leon (which is pronounced more like PONE-SAY DAY LAY-OWN than PONTZ DUH LEE-ON, and which is much easier to pronounce than common names like Jorge Villapeña, which contain at least ten (10!) special phonemes that are unlike English). On top of that, you may have to pronounce phonemes from Japan, Italy, China, Africa, Russia, and the Czech Republic! Maybe, just for kicks, this teacher watches a lot of Seinfeld, and he’ll throw in some Yiddish along the way. And you thought all you’d have to speak was English? Oy, were you wrong!

    No, my friends and colleagues, the wonderful truth is that (more…)